The Green Man

An irreverent black comedy adapted by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat from their play, Meet a Body, The Green Man marked the directorial debut of camera operator Robert Day. The more experienced Basil Dearden provided expert if unaccredited supervision.

A scintillating Alastair Sim plays Hawkins, a timid watchmaker with a part time job - he is also a professional assassin who bumps off all the people we love to hate. But when pompous MP Sir Gregory Upshott (Raymond Huntley) is the intended target, bungling vacuum cleaner salesman William Blake (George Cole) always gets in the way. As the time of the assassination draws ever closer, Hawkins tracks his victim to a dilapidated seaside hotel called The Green Man, the laughs and the tension steadily rise to a brilliant climax.

An enormously entertaining farce that dutifully ticks all the genre's expected boxes (mistaken identities, compromising positions, much panicking and slamming of doors), the film makes an interesting companion piece to MacKendrick's The Ladykillers.